6 Evidence from the Fossil Record Th e f o s s i l r e c o r d includes all of the fossils that have existed in the

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1 6 Evidence from the Fossil Record Th e f o s s i l r e c o r d includes all of the fossils that have existed in the 4.5 billion years of earth s history whether they have been discovered or not. Fossils may be bones, teeth, shells, footprints, or prints of other structures. Fossils form in several ways. An organism might have been preserved in ice, tar, amber, or volcanic ash. An organism s footprints or parts, such as leaves and feathers, might be preserved in rocks if the environmental conditions did not destroy them first. Paleontologists, the scientists who study the fossil record, use several methods to figure out when a fossil formed. The structures and ages of fossils provide evidence for macroevolution the formation of major new groups of organisms. Fossil evidence has helped scientists figure out how such groups as dinosaurs, birds, and mammals evolved. Challenge 00How do scientists interpret evidence in the fossil record? Materials For each student Student Sheet 3.1, Ideas about Evolution, from Activity 3 Student Sheet 3.2, Geologic Time and Major Events, from Activity 3 This fossil worm from the Burgess Shale lived in the Middle Cambrian era, approximately 500 million years ago. The worm lived in burrows in sediment on the seabed. 446

2 evidence from the fossil record Activity 6 Procedure 1. When reading, answer the Stopping to Think questions in your mind. 2. Go back to the geologic timeline you constructed in Activity 3, Geologic Time. On Student Sheet 3.2, Geologic Time and Major Events, label the origin of tetrapods at the appropriate time it occurred. 3. Go back to the statements on Student Sheet 3.1, Ideas about Evolution, from Activity 3. Add information from this activity or a previous activity to support whether any of the statements are correct or incorrect. Reading Determining the Age of a Fossil Paleontologists rely mainly on two methods to determine the age of the earth and the ages of rock layers and the fossils they contain. With stratigraphy, they determine the sequence of events, such as the formation of particular rock layers. With radiometric dating, they determine how many years ago rock layers and fossils formed. Stratigraphy is the study of rock layers. Rock layers form from lava flows or from sediments. As hot lava spills over an area and cools, it becomes a layer of hard rock. Sediment layers form from small particles of rock and soil that settle and build up over millions of years. Most sediment forms from ash or small particles of rock that have been worn away by ice, water, or wind. Sediment layers are softer than hardened lava and often contain many fossils. As sediment layers build up, their weight creates pressure that squeezes them into solid rock. Layers of lava and of compressed sediments are called strata. Stratigraphy is based on the logical reasoning that deeper strata and the fossils found in them are older, while upper strata and the fossils they contain formed more recently. Some of the sediments that make up the layers of the Grand Canyon in Arizona were transported by wind and water from the Appalachian Mountains in eastern North America. 447

3 Science & Global Issues/Biology evolution About 200 years ago, scientists observed that certain layers of rock in different geographic areas contained similar characteristic fossils. This observation led scientists to the idea that these layers of rock and the fossils preserved in them formed at the same time. The geologic timeline you studied in Activity 3, Geologic Time, divides geologic time into periods based on the presence or absence of various kinds of fossils in rock strata. STOPPING TO THINK 1 How do strata form? What is the relationship between strata and the fossils that formed in them? Stratigraphic dating provides the relative ages of rock layers and the fossils within them. Interpreting evidence from stratigraphy requires an understanding of geology. For example, wind and water might erode strata and uncover deeper layers. The movement of the earth s surface from an earthquake might tilt or uplift the strata, which breaks the sequence of the layers. Paleontologists consider these factors when interpreting stratigraphic evidence. With radiometric dating scientists estimate not only the order of rock layer and fossil formation, but how many years ago rock layers and fossils formed. It is based on the decay of radioactive atoms of certain elements. For example, radioactive carbon is trapped in fossils in sedimentary rock layers. Organisms take up radioactive carbon-14 when they are alive. After they die, the radioactive carbon decays. Carbon-14 has a half-life of 5,730 years, which means that half of the carbon-14 present in an organism when it dies will have decayed in 5,730 years. The graph below shows how the fraction of carbon-14 remaining indicates the age of the fossil. Measuring carbon-14 is accurate in determining dates up to 50,000 60,000 years ago. For fossils older than that, the amount of carbon-14 remaining can no longer be measured accurately. Dating fossils using carbon

4 evidence from the fossil record Activity 6 To figure out the dates of older samples, scientists work with other radioactive isotopes, such as potassium and uranium. These radioactive elements are trapped in igneous rock layers that formed as molten lava cooled, and they have longer halflives. The table below shows how these radioactive elements provide a clock that tells the ages of rock layers. Atomic Half-lives and Radiometric Dating Radioactive element Half-life (years) Useful range (years) Carbon-14 5,730 < 60,000 Potassium billion 100, billion Uranium billion 2 million 4.5 billion STOPPING TO THINK 2 How does information from radioactive data help to determine the age of a fossil? Studying Fossils to Determine the Origin of Tetrapods Paleontologists primarily study fossils. They learn a lot about extinct species by directly observing the fossils and determining how old they are. From fossils they also infer the habitats and behavior of previous organisms. One of the most fascinating evolutionary puzzles paleontologists have studied is the macroevolution of terrestrial tetrapods from marine fish. Terrestrial tetrapods are the four-limbed mammals, reptiles, amphibians, and birds that live on land. In the late 19th century, paleontologist Edward Cope proposed that tetrapods evolved from aquatic vertebrates that had fleshy fins with structural similarities to limbs. These fleshy-finned organisms were similar to the coelacanth and lungfish alive today. But the details of the evolution of tetrapods remained mostly unknown, including the timeframe of the events. Until 1987, the fossil evidence was based on two forms, Eusthenopteron and Ichthyostega. They were not fishes as we think of them today; they were distinct from the true ray-finned fishes such as tuna and trout. Rather, they were fleshy-finned forms, whose limbs and fins were covered with fleshy muscle, like our hands and the hands of all tetrapods. Eusthenopteron and Ichthyostega are not tetrapods, but they are on the line to tetrapods, as shown in the tree on the next page. 449

5 Science & Global Issues/Biology evolution Edward Cope s hypothesis, shown as an evolutionary tree You have probably seen a drawing of an organism, such as a lungfish, crawling out of water onto land. Scientists were curious about whether this was how tetrapods evolved. Did a fish propel itself onto land with its fins and then evolve limbs? Or did tetrapods evolve in an aquatic environment? Eusthenopteron and Ichthyo stega did not provide evidence to answer these questions. Since the late 1980s, scientists have found fossils that have helped them figure out the sequence of events leading to the divergence of the tetrapods. They have sequenced the fossils by a process similar to the one you used in Activity 5, Using Fossil Evidence to Investigate Whale Evolution. Stratigraphy and radiometric dating helped them determine the age of fossils they discovered. A particularly important fossil is the skeleton of Acanthostega, discovered in East Greenland in This organism had legs and feet, but it lacked other body parts associated with life on land. Its legs did not have ankles strong enough to support its weight on land; instead, they were like paddles. And while it had both lungs and gills, its rib cage was too short to prevent the chest cavity from collapsing when on land. Acanthostega changed the thinking about events leading to life on land. It suggested that aquatic organisms evolved such features as lungs and legs with feet in the shallow-water environments along coastal margins during the Devonian period. Scientists hypothesized that these features allowed hunting, mating, and perhaps laying eggs in low-water areas of tangled vegetation. According to this hypothesis, the lungs and legs were later co-opted in new evolving species for life on land. Co-opted features are those that evolved to serve one function, and later evolved through natural selection to perform a new function. 450

6 evidence from the fossil record Activity 6 SKeletal elements humerus radius ulna distal elements fossil evidence 8 digits 7 digits hind lungfish living tetrapods Acanthostega had four limbs and was a tetrapod, but it lived in water and had not made the transition to land. STOPPING TO THINK 3 How did Acanthostega change scientists thinking about the evolution of tetrapods? As scientists continued hunting for fossils all over the world, they discovered more fish-like tetrapods and tetrapod-like fishes. These examples began to fill in branches of the evolutionary tree between Eusthenopteron and Acanthostega. They also suggested that tetrapods originated million years ago, in the Middle Devonian time period. In 1999, a team of scientists set out to hunt for fossils in rock layers they knew had formed between 380 and 363 million years ago. They chose an area of the Canadian Arctic that paleontologists had not searched before. This was an ideal place to search because no buildings, roads, or trees covered the rock layers. After seven years, in 2006, the team announced their headline-making discovery of Tiktaalik, a 375-million-year-old fleshy-finned fossil. Tiktaalik had the scales and gills of other aquatic vertebrates, but it had lungs too, like other fleshy fins including the lungfish and coelacanth. It had a tetrapod-like head and the beginnings of a neck. Its fleshy fins had thin ray bones for paddling in water, but stronger interior bones for support, much like those in tetrapods. Because of its clear transitional features, Tiktaalik is humorously nicknamed the fishapod, but in fact it is only one in a series of forms in the transition to land. 451

7 Science & Global Issues/Biology evolution The discovery of Tiktaalik in 2006 provided additional evidence about the evolution of tetrapods. Transitional Fossils Such fossils as Tiktaalik, Acanthostega, and Ichthyostega, have helped scientists understand and explain the evolutionary stages that led to the origin of tetrapods and life on land. Fossils that show the intermediate state between an ancestor and its descendents are sometimes called transitional fossils. Transitional fossils that have not been discovered have been referred to as missing links. This term is misleading, because scientists do not expect that a given fossil will be the direct ancestor of another. At best it may be a distant cousin, but it will have many of the features that the undiscovered direct ancestors did have. Thus, the fact that a perfectly transitional fossil has not been discovered does not mean that the taxon did not exist. Scientists expect that many direct and distantly related transitional fossils will never be found for several reasons. First, some organisms or body parts of organisms do not form fossils well. Second, the environmental conditions or natural geologic processes may have prevented fossil formation or destroyed fossils before they could be found. Third, only a tiny fraction of existing fossils will ever be found because many are buried under ice caps or are so far underground that they are impossible to reach. And finally, finding fossils is difficult, slow, and costly in areas that have harsh weather conditions. Despite these obstacles, many transitional fossils have been found since the 1800s. These include fossils in lines of descent that led to reptiles, birds, and mammals. 452

8 evidence from the fossil record Activity 6 STOPPING TO THINK 4 What makes a fossil a transitional fossil? What are the reasons scientists expect there to be gaps in the fossil record? Transitional Features Because many transitional fossils are unlikely to be found, many evolutionary biologists focus on transitional features, those specific features of fossils that show the intermediate state between an ancestor and its descendants. This approach is based on the idea that, even though nobody finds the single direct ancestor leading to a group of organisms, someone may find other organisms that have branched from the same line of descent. By studying the features of these organisms, scientists can put together a picture of the evolution of features that led to major new groups of organisms. Although not all fossils are likely to be found, there is abundant fossil evidence to show that evolution occurs. And, as shown by the origin of tetrapods, the work of scientists has reconstructed the steps by which major transitions occurred. This has led to a better understanding of the process of evolution. Analysis 1. Based on what you know about the geologic timeline and the formation of the earth, explain which fossils would be newer and older in the various layers of rock in the Grand Canyon. 2. Explain why Cope s ideas about the evolution of tetrapods were considered a hypothesis and not a theory. 3. a. What new hypothesis was suggested for the evolution of tetrapods following Cope s original hypothesis? b. Explain the evidence that led to the hypothesis you described in (a). Key vocabulary co-opted features evolution fossil record macroevolution radiometric dating strata stratigraphic dating stratigraphy terrestrial tetrapods transitional features transitional fossils 453

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